EVENTS

Even drinking water

Southeast of Lake McClure is the town of East Porterville, where waterways aren’t the only thing drying out. The town’s residents have also run out of well water, the primary source of drinking water for many of the area’s homes, according to the New York Times.

Residents haven’t had running water in months and rely on donated water tanks to bathe, wash clothes and eat, the report added. To drink, many of the city’s residents rely on bottled water, either donated or purchased on their own.

The town is largely made up of Mexican immigrants who work in the fields all day, toiling under the sun. The local high school has allowed students to come in early to take showers in the locker rooms, if needed, the report added.

Mexican immigrants who work in the fields all day, toiling under the sun, who have to buy drinking water.

Comments

I know someone who lives in Porterville. It’s the ass-end of nowhere. It’s smoggy (San Joaquin Valley inversion traps the smog produced by larger cities further up the valley), dry compared to most of the valley (only 13 inches rainfall average), but ironically also prone to flooding in the spring (when melt from the Sierra snowpack overfills the Tule River). Subject to endemic, sometimes-deadly Valley Fever. Poor, about one-third of children live in households with incomes under the federal poverty line. Little tax money for public education, of course, Porterville High School college-readiness less than 16%. You’d have to pay me a fortune to put up with living there.

East Porterville is an unicorporated wedge of county adjacent to Porterville and subject to all the same problems, with the additional problem that they don’t have a city government which might lobby for them in Sacramento and might have gotten someone on the State Water Board to pay attention sooner.

The current drought “solution” is that Tulare County has proposed funding a deep new well in Porterville; water from that well – when it comes online (sometime this year) – will be delivered by tanker truck to residences in East Porterville which have food-grade approved water storage tanks. Porterville city water district will manage the deliveries, and the state/feds are expected to reimburse the city/county for at least 75% of the costs of this 1.6 million-dollar well. Concurrently, there is a county Emergency Services program to provide assistance to residents who can’t afford to buy a food-grade water tank.

At least it would be an improvement over everybody having to drive to town and fill up gallon bottles to take home, or having to pay for bottled water. 1500-2000 gallons of water in your household tank would allow you to give your kids a drink of water without having to worry about whether you have enough gas in the car to go get more when that gallon jug runs out. And it might even be enough to allow you to take a shower at home once in a while. What a luxury!